Ekajati

This is a timely moment to reflect on Ekajati.  For those unfamiliar with the deities and dharmapalas of buddhism, they are not separate solid beings that we look at or reflect on.  These manifestations are our projection.  Projections as to what is possible and how deep and bountiful the mind is.   When we call Ekajati, we call a part of ourselves and in turn we are awakening what already exists in us.

In my first conscious meeting with Ekajati, I connected with her emanation of power, primordial insight*, one-pointed vision, fearsomeness, her physical manifestation and her basic radicalness for the benefit of all beings.  These aspects of my mind and heart immediately caught fire.   

Ekajati is a dharmapali, a wrathful deity, a mahakali, a protector of the truth, of the dzogchen tantras.**  

Ekajati is dark blue in color.  She has one turquoise lock of hair, one eye with primordial awareness, one fang cutting through obstacles and one breast feeding the milk of practitioners.  Her clothing is of tiger skin wrapped around her waist representing her fearlessness towards realization.  She decorates herself with bone and a skull crown.  These ornaments of the charnel ground symbolize that negativities and emotions are both liberated and destroyed, then worn.  She carries a bleeding heart in her right hand representing confused practitioners that have strayed.  One hundred iron wolves spring from her left as her attendants and she is equipped to direct the complacent and the irreverent.  Often times Ekajati is depicted surrounded by flames, representing the indestructible energy of compassion and wisdom, this energy expressed through intense anger, but anger that does not contain hatred.  It is certain, true and cutting.

Ekajati outwardly is wrathful, like all dharmapli, but the root is of compassion, compassion that cuts through and stomps on ego.  Enabling practitioners to see clearly, and to not be obscured by both inner and outer hindrances.  

May all beings be free from suffering

May all beings kindly share heart with fire and truth

And May all beings be liberated

* awareness and intellect without reference point, without beginning or end.
**the highest level of realization in the Nyingma buddhist tradition